We’ve got a trio of excellent releases from Denovali out at the end of this month, plus influential industrial, grinding gothic riffage, and electronic all-sorts tonight.
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Dictaphone – Your Reign is Over [Denovali/Bandcamp]
Dictaphone – rising minimal [City Centre Offices/Denovali/Bandcamp]
Dictaphone – rattle feat. Mariechen Danz [Sonic Pieces/Denovali/Bandcamp]
Oliver Doerell – Hands [Oxmose/Bandcamp]
Dictaphone – Il Grande Silenzio [Denovali/Bandcamp]
The first of three new releases from German label Denovali to be released this coming Friday, the 30th of April, comes from the lovely Dictaphone. Their previous, and first on Denovali, came out in 2017, but their history goes back a lot further. Convened by Belgian multi-instrumentalist Oliver Doerell, their characteristic sound is derived from the combination of warm, organic instrumentation with warm dub-inflected electronics. In particular, the clarinet of Roger Döring, fluttering and arcing over the burbling rhythms, is essential to what makes Dictaphone so special. A little after they began, German genre-crossing violinist Alex Stolze joined, and these two instruments lend a neo-classical feel to the group’s aesthetic, which probably had something to do with their move from beloved, now defunct electronic label City Centre Offices to Monique Recknagel’s wonderful Sonic Pieces for their third album, Poems from a rooftop, quite a magical affair. As well as the post-classical-meets-glitch of Swod (with pianist Stephan Wöhrmann), Doerell has collaborated with Hood’s Chris Adams, and released a solo album in 2019, my life with M., which sounds like the electronic elements of Dictaphone pushed up a notch or two. The new Dictaphone album Goats & Distortions 5 (yes, it’s their 5th) is everything you’d want from a Dictaphone album – acoustic basslines, bubbling clarinet, shimmering violin and snippets of vocals.
LTO – Derwyddon [Denovali/Bandcamp]
LTO – Contar [Injazero/Bandcamp]
LTO – Tharsis [Denovali/Bandcamp]
One of the members of the mysterious post-dubstep collective Old Apparatus, each of whom make singular music solo as well as (occasionally) together, LTO carries on the mystery of Old Apparatus with little to identify himself beyond blurry photographs and the knowledge he’s from Bristol. Old Apparatus were always more from the dancefloor than of the dancefloor, and LTO’s music has only taken him further from beats & basslines as its bread & butter – albeit still with deep bass and percussive sounds at times. It’s very evocative, and less noisy than, say, the post-dancefloor music of Vex’d’s Roly Porter – but, true to the beguiling work of Old Apparatus, it’s immersive and surprising, absolutely worth your time. I played one early solo LTO track in the middle, a kind of jittery dubby techno number.
Dalhous – Emersion [Denovali/Bandcamp]
Dalhous – Success is Her Sensuality [Blackest Ever Black/Denovali/Bandcamp]
Dalhous – Sight Of Hirta [Blackest Ever Black/Denovali/Bandcamp]
Dalhous – Bahy-Oh-Feed-Bak [Blackest Ever Black/Denovali/Bandcamp]
Dalhous – Phantasies From The Schema [Denovali/Bandcamp]
Primarily the work of Marc Dall, at times with the presumably pseudonymous Alex Ander, Dalhous spent much of its existence released on the UK label Blackest Ever Black until its untimely closure a couple of years ago. Their catalogue has now been taken over by Denovali, who are finally releasing Vol. 2 of The Composite Moods Collection, which takes off, inverted, from where 2016’s Vol. 1 left off, showing a fraught relationship from the perspective of the photographed subject from that album. Dalhous’s work has always been influenced by the history of psychiatry, with beautiful but at times anxious and disturbing musical invocations of mental states. At their best, the lush synthscapes of Jean Michel Jarre, the beats of early Autechre, Boards of Canada & Bola combine in a post-dubstep space to create something enthralling and timeless. The latest two albums push into a more cinematic space, less concerned with individual, structured tracks, which for me can be less engaging; but there’s still much to appreciate.
Coil – Snow (demonic apollo b version) [Wax Trax! etc/Infinite Fog Production/Bandcamp]
Coil – Things Happen (feat. Annie Anxiety Bandez) [Wax Trax! etc/Infinite Fog Production/Bandcamp]
Over 10 years after Peter “Sleazy” Christophersen passed, another six years after his partner Jhonn Balance, the Coil re-release machine is very much in full swing, with myriad “unearthed” alternate takes and out-takes from collaborators like Danny Hyde continuing to make money for various people. But there’s no doubt that Hyde himself was deeply important to the sound Coil built, as were people like Thighpaulsandra, Drew McDowall and others. No doubt also the recent remaster of Musick to Play in the Dark is exquisite-sounding and well deserving to be available again (I hope they follow up with part 2 soon!) And so, unlike certain cash-ins of late, it’s also hard to complain about Love’s Secret Domain being celebrated 30 years after its release – a pivotal album for Coil, with ambient techno and folky melodicism along with their queer industrial pop. Whether the bonus tracks with this new edition are all that necessary is questionable, what with so much Coil detritus around, but it’s nice enough stuff like the shorter, gentler version of “The Snow” I played tonight. The album itself is as important as ever, seemingly untouched by time. Even Little Annie Anxiety Bandez sounds hardly different compared to her recent outings.
Robert Vincs & Adam Nash – E.K.O. [Echogene]
Melbourne label Echogene brings another collaborative effort here from Australian avant-sax player Robert Vincs, who’s worked in the experimental world for some decades now. Here he teams up with electronic artist Adam Nash, whose generative sound programs interact with the sax in strange ways, with snippets of vocals and noise lending this work a quite industrial feel.
Makeda – Fable [Butter Sessions/Bandcamp]
It’s probably not fair for Sydney, Brisbane or Melbourne to lay claim to the excellent DJ & producer Makeda, but Melbourne is where she resides now, and she’s one of the aritsts Melbourne institution Butter Sessions invited to contribute to a series of 12″s celebrating their 10th birthday. Among the techno, dub & electro outings (and Butter Sessions are nothing if not eclectic), Makeda’s work stands out as particularly experimental, with unconventional mixing and structure, juggling and chopping breakbeats, vocal snippets and other detritus of club music with flair & originality.
AURA – Count On Mi [Early Reflex]
Sydney’s Daniel Curtis released an EP as AURA on Turin-based electronic label Early Reflex last year. The label, run by Alec Pace, is releasing it second compilation flex002 next week, with AURA contributing something a little poppier than his previous work.
High Tides – Lines On The Horizon (Tim Koch Remix) [i, absentee]
Los Angeles label i, absentee released their Birth Certificate in 2008, and now it seems it’s time for the Death Certificate, a final compilation coming out as double CD and digital with artists across the ambient & experimental electronic spectrum. It’s released mid-May and tonight we have a little preview, a remix by Adelaide’s Tim Koch of LA’s High Tides, with Koch’s more recent stylings in effect – granular textures and crunchy beats ahoy!
James Welburn – Fast Moon (feat. Juliana Venter) [Miasmah/Bandcamp]
James Welburn – Duration (feat. Tony Buck) [Miasmah/Bandcamp]
James Welburn – In And Out Of Blue (feat. Tomas Järmyr and Juliana Venter) [Miasmah/Bandcamp]
UK multi-instrumentalist James Welburn has been based in Berlin for a while. It’s there that he met Sydney’s Tony Buck (of The Necks), who worked with Welburn on his first album, Hold, for Erik Skodvin’s great doomy label Miasmah. Six years later for his follow-up Sleeper in the Void, Welburn has a new set of collaborators. Swedish drummer Tomas Järmyr (of Motorpsycho and many others) appears on many tracks, and Welburn’s previous collaborator Juliana Venter contributes textural vocals on a couple of tracks. It was great to be reminded of the doomy riffs, drones and rhythms of Welburn’s excellent debut, and this delayed follow-up doesn’t stray too far, but extends into programmed, almost dancefloor beats on “Fast Moon”, while Järmyr’s drumming is a little more expansive and rocky than the muscular, propulsive work of Buck on the debut, splashing cymbals where Buck pounds the toms. Grab both at Bandcamp.
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